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The Spotsylvania County Sheriff’s Office recently arrested and/or indicted a number of individuals as part of an online sting that was done over the summer. The Democratic nominee for Attorney General, Steve Shannon, released this press release regarding the sting:

Fairfax– Steve Shannon, candidate for Attorney General, today commended the Spotsylvania police department for their work in finding and charging 15 child predators in an Internet sting.

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“Spotsylvania’s police department is to be commended for their fast and thorough work in bringing these twisted individuals to court and making their community safer for kids,” Shannon said. “As these arrests show, Internet predators are often hiding right in front of our eyes, living in our towns and even working in our schools. When I’m Attorney General, I will make sure that our law enforcement officers have the training they need to conduct stings like the one in Spotsylvania, rooting out Internet predators, and bringing them to justice.”

The problem? Spotsylvania County doesn’t have a police department, it has this thing called a “sheriff’s office”. See, the voters go to the polls and elect this guy called the “High Sheriff”, who gets to administer and run the office for four years. In jurisdictions that have police departments (all jurisdictions have Sheriffs, even if all they do is court security), the Board of Supervisors or the City Council hires a police chief on a contract who gets to run the department autonomously (in theory).

It isn’t as if this type of stuff is some obscure trivia that the chief law-enforcement officer in the state shouldn’t know. It’s kinda germane to his qualifications and skills, if elected, as the next Attorney General for this state.

I agree the guy’s not worth much otherwise, but don’t lots of people interchangeably use the terms “police” and “sheriff?” I know that if I tell people to call a deputy, I’d probably make the egregious error of saying “call the police department at ###-###-####.” I could probably come up with a recent date of when I used both terms in the same conversation.

I know there’s a bureaucratic distinction between the Richmond Police Department and the Northumberland County Sheriff’s Office, but if I were to ask a deputy in plain clothes where he works he’d probably say I work for the police department in Northumberland.

Let’s stick to nailing this guy on policy points, not conversational semantics, lest we become more like “that other party.”

Shannon’s marketing strategy is putting up signs illegally in the medians of roads, on/off ramps of I-95, and taped to stop signs and traffic signal poles. These are all ILLEGAL, and not just in one little district or county by an individual supporter or committee, it’s everywhere… obviously an order of the campaign.

Does it surprise anyone that his knowledge of law enforcement roles is lacking when his ability to follow laws is apparently not there either?

I agree, however, what’s the big deal on the semantics. Don’t the typical Democratic candidates give us enough to defeat them on on policy? This sign thing is moving in the right direction–an actual illegal practice.

Maybe this election season we conservatives can actually use these failures and win for once. One can only hope….and dimple the correct chad.